1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to power management in computers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computers with power-management capabilities are known. Power management causes the computer to turn off a large portion of its circuitry in order to conserve power. Such power management techniques are common on portables and on "green" computers. For instance, such computers utilize a power management timer that will cause the computer to go into a power management mode when the timer has timed out. However, the timer is reset by such activity as keyboard or mouse activity. Thus, when the keyboard or mouse is active, the computer will not go into a power management mode.
When computers with power management are used with applications such as serial communication programs, the power management feature can be invoked inadvertently, during, e.g., a long download, when there is no keyboard or mouse activity. That can disrupt the serial protocol and cause an error or an abort of the download or other serial communication.
One solution to the problem of inadvertent invocation of power management is to turn off power management through the setup screen prior to starting the serial communications program. The user must then remember to turn power management back on after the serial communications program has completed its task. In many cases that requires a reboot of the computer system.
It would be desirable to provide a power management system in which application programs will not be disrupted on account of inadvertent invocation of power management mode. Further, it would be desirable to provide such a power management system which requires no user intervention.